Why Trump needs the United Nations
Eric Rosand Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The United Nations is not only imperfect, it is also misunderstood. Somewhat predictably, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans unleashed a torrent of criticism against the U.N. Security Council’s adoption of a resolution on December 23 condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. To express his disapproval, Trump described the institution as “just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time” and went on to suggest that “if it is causing problems rather than solving them…it will be a waste of time and money if it doesn’t start living up to its potential.” Several U.S. lawmakers have since demanded that the United States restrict its funding for the global body over the Security Council vote and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin even went as far as to call on the United States to leave the U.N.
The United Nations’ failures, of course, are well known. Less known is what it gets right, and on this score even Trump should find much to love in the institution. Indeed, if his administration hopes to, as he says, work with all “freedom loving partners” to eradicate terrorism, he will need the U.N., warts and all.
In the post–9/11 era—and often at the behest of U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama—the U.N. has played a central role in globalizing the fight against terrorism and strengthening international cooperation and capacities to defeat al-Qaida, the Islamic State (ISIS), and other terrorist groups. Less than three weeks after 9/11, Bush relied on the U.N. Security Council to require all countries to reboot or upgrade their counterterrorism laws. As a result, dozens of nations put in place new legal measures to crack down on terrorists and their financiers. Obama likewise went to the U.N. when he sought to tighten sanctions against and cut off financial flows to ISIS and to push the White House agenda to counter violent extremism around the world. Critical U.S. partners, including China, India, and Russia, and Muslim-majority countries ranging from Egypt to Indonesia, now generally insist that all nonmilitary counterterrorism measures (such as the tightening of border controls, investigating and prosecuting terrorists, or countering radicalization at home) be grounded in some way on the U.N. counterterrorism framework that evolved rapidly after 9/11. This framework is seen as being in compliance with international law and therefore carries broad global legitimacy, in large part because it is derived from the U.N. Charter itself.
The comprehensive legal and political framework that the United Nations has developed not only facilitates and underpins international counterterrorism cooperation, including against ISIS, but also makes U.S. efforts more broadly legitimate. This framework includes 19 U.N. treaties requiring states to criminalize different terrorist acts. Recent legislation adopted by Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Niger, Nigeria, and Tunisia—developed with the help of U.N. experts—has incorporated into domestic law key requirements emanating from the framework. It also includes Security Council resolutions that impose obligations on all 193 member states to tighten terrorism laws, strengthen border controls to prevent terrorism, and do more to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to conflict zones. In the wake of these legally binding resolutions, more than 60 countries now have laws in place to prosecute and penalize the activities of foreign terrorist fighters and have in fact prosecuted or arrested such fighters, either prior to departure or upon their return home, or their facilitators. The broadest piece of the framework is the U.N. General Assembly’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which provides a hard-won basis for collective action against terrorism. This strategy signaled a shift, at least rhetorically, in international counterterrorism efforts, as it included both preventive and responsive measures, focusing not just on tighter security measures, but also on addressing the underlying political, economic, and social conditions that give rise to terrorism in the first place.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/01/11/why-trump-needs-the-united-nations/
